International partnerships
Oceanography and earth sciences are truly international pursuits. Scientists at NOC collaborate with colleagues around the world and we attract staff and students from many nations.
Institutional links
Where it helps to further relations through formalised agreements NOC has partnership links through memoranda of understanding (MoUs) with many of the world's leading institutes. These include:
China National Oceanographic Research Centre, Qingdao (a consortium comprising Ocean University of China; the Institute of Oceanology (Chinese Academy of Sciences); the First Institute of Oceanography , the Second Institute of Oceanography (State Oceanic Administration of China) and The Qingdao Institute of Marine Geology (China Geology Survey).
India
National Institute of Oceanography, Goa
Malaysia
Institute of Ocean and Earth Sciences, University of Malaya, Malaysia
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute
Scripps Institute of Oceanography, San Diego
Others are under development. For a full list please contact NMCO
Within Europe have particularly close links with IFREMER, France; IFM-GEOMAR, Germany and the Marine Institute, Ireland.
International marine science forums
International Memberships:
NOC is a member of
The Partnership for observation of the global oceans (POGO)
The European Science Foundation Marine Board
IODP-MI - the International Ocean Drilling Project, Management International Inc.
International barter arrangements
NOC operates research ships and equipment on behalf of the marine science community. We take part in multilateral barter arrangements allowing access to the ships and facilities of other nations http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/facilities/marine/barter.asp
Capacity development
NOC welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with scientists from around the world. International collaboration can offer many benefits, including greater science impact, access to facilities, filling gaps in data and the promotion of excellence through training, international comparison and knowledge exchange. Collaboration can also underpin international development goals and help strengthen research capacity and local expertise in developing countries.
On behalf of the UK Government NOC staff lead the
NOC hosts the International Project office for CLIVAR http://www.clivar.org, the climate variability and predictability programme of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). CLIVAR's regional panels seek to aid capacity development through the inclusion of developing country scientists into their memberships, particularly those of the American and Asian Monsoon, Indian Ocean and African panels, and through sponsoring attendance at its workshops. Funding support for such actions has come in the past through the World Meteorological Organization and WCRP, itself, IOC GOOS and also through other organizations such as START (the global change SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training (http://www.start.org/) and other agencies.
NOC hosts visiting fellows supported by the Programme for Global Observations (POGO) capacity development programme (see http://www.ocean-partners.org/Training-Education.htm)and contributes to programmes and projects to develop teaching packages - for example the UNESCO supported BILKO initiative, a complete system for learning and teaching remote sensing image analysis skills. Current lessons teach the application of remote sensing to oceanography and coastal management, http://www.unesco.bilko.org
NOC works closely with GOOS-Africa, and other European and African partners to support the continued development of an African ocean observing and forecasting system. Recent initiatives include ALTICORE-Africa, which will extend the analysis of archived altimetry into coastal regions to gain new insights into the dynamics of coastal and shelf seas, and GEONetCast-Africa, a regional implementation of the GEONetCast system to transmit large data streams of environmental information in near real-time from data providers in Africa and Europe to African research organisations who would otherwise have problems accessing such datasets.
International projects
For a list of the international research projects involving NOCS scientists please visit http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/nocs/projects.php
